Thu, Jun 30, 2011from ScienceDaily: Farm Animal Disease to Increase With Climate Change, Scientists SayResearchers looked at changes in the behaviour of bluetongue -- a viral disease of cattle and sheep -- from the 1960s to the present day, as well as what could happen to the transmission of the virus 40 years into the future. They found, for the first time, that an outbreak of a disease could be explained by changes to the climate....
The team examined the effect of past climate on the risk of the virus over the past 50 years to understand the specific triggers for disease outbreak over time and throughout geographical regions. This model was then driven forwards in time, using predictive climate models, to the year 2050, to show how the disease may react to future climate change.
Using these future projections, researchers found that in northern Europe there could be a 17 percent increase in incidence of the bluetongue virus, compared to 7 percent in southern regions, where it is already much warmer.
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Tue, Jun 28, 2011from The Telegraph: Warming oceans cause largest movement of marine species in two million yearsWarming ocean waters are causing the largest movement of marine species seen on Earth in more than two million years, according to scientists.
In the Arctic, melting sea ice during recent summers has allowed a passage to open up from the Pacific ocean into the North Atlantic, allowing plankton, fish and even whales to into the Atlantic Ocean from the Pacific.
The discovery has sparked fears delicate marine food webs could be unbalanced and lead to some species becoming extinct as competition for food between the native species and the invaders stretches resources....
The highly venomous Portuguese Man-of-War, which is normally found in subtropical waters, is also regularly been found in the northern Atlantic waters....
"In 1999 we discovered a species in the north west Atlantic that we hadn't seen before, but we know from surveys in the north Pacific that it is very abundant there.
"This species died out in the Atlantic around 800,000 years ago due to glaciation that changed the conditions it needed to survive.
"The implications are huge. The last time there was an incursion of species from the Pacific into the Atlantic was around two to three million years ago....
"Large numbers of species were introduced from the Pacific and made large numbers of local Atlantic species extinct. ...

Mon, Jun 27, 2011from Washington Post: Arctic sea ice headed for another major meltAccording to one measure of sea ice coverage - average ice extent - the decline in ice cover appears to be occurring slightly faster so far this year than in June 2007, but it's not clear that it will wind up below the extent measured in September 2007....
"It is important to note for context that all 2011 estimates are well below the 1979-2007 September climatological mean of 6.7 million square kilometers."...
"We do not know if Arctic change is responsible for record cold outbreaks in Europe the past two years or the heavy snowstorms along the U.S. East Coast. All we know right now is that the behavior fits the current theory." ...

Mon, Jun 27, 2011from New Zealand Herald, thru DesdemonaDespair: Insurance industry facing a climate of fearFor an industry whose survival means managing risk, these are challenging times.
Nations which are focused on their economic problems have barely begun to contemplate how they will deal with the scientists' scenario of a warming planet. Yet insurers must calculate their exposure as our assumptions - that homes will be safe, food will be secure and infrastructure will work - are tested by ever more common "Hundred Year" weather disasters, a change that reinsurer Swiss Re calls the "new normal"....
Trying to get a handle on this new normal means taking climate science very seriously. And the news is not good. Last month the International Energy Agency said carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose by a record 31 billion tonnes last year, making it more likely that the temperature rise this century would exceed 2C, unleashing runaway global warming and apocalyptic changes, including famine....
"Many of the risks posed by climate change will become uninsurable," predicts Mills.
Insurance survives by identifying risks in advance. But climate change is a new ballgame, both in scale and weather volatility. Insurers could also risk losses from liability suits brought against customers who are blamed for fuelling climate change - a fossil fuel company, for example. ...